European enterprises are beginning to embrace the benefits of virtualizing IT assets and accessing applications through the cloud, but still are concerned about security according to a recent study.
According to the study commissioned by Brocade, over a third of respondents cited security as the most significant barrier to cloud adoption, closely followed by the complexities of virtualizing data centers, network infrastructure and bandwidth.
“As data centers become distributed, the network infrastructure must take on the characteristics of a data center. For the cloud to achieve its true promise, the network needs to deliver high performance, scalability and security,” said Alberto Soto, Vice President, EMEA, at Brocade. “What our research tells us is that companies are now recognizing the profound positive economic implications of adopting cloud solutions and are ready to make the journey of adoption, but only with a sound infrastructure in place.”
The results of the study showed that 60 percent of enterprises expect to have started the planning and migration to a distributed – or cloud – computing model within the next two years. Key business drivers for doing so are to reduce cost (30 percent), improve business efficiency (21 percent) and enhance business agility (16 percent).
The study also analyzed the small-to-medium enterprise (SME) space, and while enterprises are embracing the cloud and the business advantages it brings, SMEs appear to be slightly slower to adopt with only 42 percent predicting a move to the cloud within the next two years; unsurprisingly, 63 percent of these plan to opt for a hosted solution.
The findings appear to confirm recent research by analyst firm IDC, which identified that cloud IT services are currently worth £10.7bn globally, a figure that is estimated to grow to around £27bn by 2013.